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Sid Hartman
As a footnote of sorts, I’m leaving this article about ending objectivity in journalism. It’s a stunning admission of truth in a profession that seems to badly lack it. I don’t mean to praise it, just that it’s finally confessed: https://www.poynter.org/educators-students/2020/its-time-for-journalism-educators-to-rethink-objectivity-and-teach-more-about-context/
I’m sorry. I really, really tried to read the entire linked article. But I couldn’t get much beyond this:
To go back to Winston’s Inexhaustible Well:
Once a person, or a people, start to believe that there are different truths based on each invididual’s experience of a reality that, perhaps, is available only to them and which is different for all others, then we’ve lost our common humanity, and we might as well hang it up.
Yes, you are so correct. It erases the line between objective truth and fiction. Truth, and history is merely a figment of one’s perception of reality. And once that’s established, there can be no common view of the future.
History is never set in stone, no matter how much stone you set on it.
Consider:
We love stories, and use stories to try to shape our world, even if our stories are not really true. So it is with the 1619 lies, so it was really with conceptions we once had about Columbus, or early American history. I like to collect old history books – textbooks especially. The older the better, especially if they were only regionally popular. They are illuminating of what people thought others ought to know, and ought to cherish in eras long gone. Native Americans of course were still called “Indians” when I was a kid (80s), but a century ago “Indians” was often interchangeable with “savages” and similar terms. We should be glad that how we remember and interpret history is not always immutable, even as we remain acutely vigilant that some mutations are horrific.
Years ago, James Loewen wrote a book called Lies My Teacher Told Me. My copy is from around 2000, and I don’t know if he continued to update the book. He surveyed some of the most popular high school and college American History textbooks and illustrated where they oversimplified history, or completely inverted it, in order to hew to what was then expected. Woodrow Wilson was, at that time, still revered in most textbooks, and those books omitted not only his racism here, but his happy adventurism in invading numerous Central and South-American nations (Wilson holds the record among US presidents for most invasions of other nations).
Loewen’s ultimate point was that lies about history, particularly those that elevate heroes and damn villains wholesale, create the very ideological issues you illustrate. Lies always are found out – maybe not for a long time, but they are found out. When people discover they have been lied to, they tend to over-react, often lying right back because you’ve damned someone they thought a hero.
These things go in long cycles.
You bring up an important, and crucial point. Sometimes the records of history don’t include all the facts or pertinent perspectives to create an accurate picture of the event or timeline. But it’s entirely another thing to willfully omit facts to construct a false conclusion of history, or to add falsities. I think that’s where we are now, combined with a narrative that favors certain events over others – mostly to create the perception that America is inherently evil or racist or hateful or whatever the shamers wish to put forth. That does a grave disservice to our kids and the unified health of our nation that we can’t celebrate our victories but also not ignore where we fell short of the ideal. I absolutely love that you collect old history texts. You may have to do a post on that, if I may make a humble request.
I’d not thought of doing that, actually. I’ve got some real corkers.
Well now you’ve been outed!
Um, I have a nit to pick regarding your characterization of “Sid!” (Otherwise, I liked you piece and appreciate the thought behind it and all that!)
I nearly did a spit-take when I read the line quoted above. Lifelong Minnesota resident and sports fan. But half as old as Sid. When I was growing up, all that was allowed on our radio at home was the station that Sid was on, WCCO-AM, and the older men in my family poured over Sid’s columns every week in the newspaper. (Fun Fact: Only when I got my own radio could I then tune into FM stations, other than WCCO-AM, to listen to pop music and rock ‘n roll!)
Needless to say, I rebelled, and I am still rebelling. Sid was full of (unintentional) hyperbole and booster-ism. And if there were “bad” facts or facts that cast one of his “close, personal friends” in an unfavorable light, then those facts would not be reported by Sid. I think an example in the post other than “Sid!” would have been more compelling to me, but maybe that is just me.
But still, and maybe it is the COVID talking, I found myself deeply saddened upon his passing. For us “rebels” he was a foil and relatively harmless. It is the end of an era and a Minnesota institution. Maybe it is the also the end of an innocence when we would banter with each other about our favorite sports teams instead of now shaming or being shamed on how we deal with the pandemic.
You’re right about Sid being a homer, though far from a Paul Allen-type, nearly unhinged devotion. But I was really thinking about his favor to straight reporting, if dispassionate about poor play by Minnesota teams. But hey, you don’t get a statue outside Target Field by being a perpetual Negative Nellie. I agree with you though, that he will be missed, and not just by his ‘close, personal friends’.
My favorite Sid moment, which could only have come from someone of his generation, was when we were toasting the end of the old HQ on Portland Avenue. He gave a passionate speech about the family that used to own the paper, and how they were instrumental in pushing for urban renewal, and helped push through the bulldozing of the Gateway district – now seen as one of the monumental urban miscalculations in the city”s history. But to him and his cohort, it was skid row with a lotta old buildings, who needs ’em.
I rewatch the PBS series “Lost Twin Cities” when it pops on in the late hours. I lament never having seen the Metropolitan Building in person, a behemoth of glass, iron, and stone. Urban renewal seems to always wash over the city (& St. Paul) every odd decade leaving the promise of a new, renewed city center. Nicollet Avenue,
CalhounBde Maka Ska Square, Uptown, but who knows what comes next. The Pandemic-Riots have done a good job of razing the area, so the Pohlads have a wide, blank slate now.